Broadcast vs. Targeting

Are you a B2B marketer frustrated by your digital campaign results? Could it be that you are broadcasting in the hope that your content will be seen by your niche audience? Do you have high bounce rates and high cost per acquisition?

Broadcasting was something we did as normal a few years ago with social media. It was normal. There were not many alternatives 4-5 years ago. Times have changed and I have seen that change reach maturity in 2015, especially with LinkedIn.

I believe that targeting is key for B2B social media marketers in 2015. I am a firm believer based on my own extensive experience that the time spent targeting gives better results compared to the quick action broadcast and keep your fingers crossed that we were used to for many years.

LinkedIn B2B Targeting Options

LinkedIn have had the sponsored update option for a couple of years. Here is a full guide on how to make the best use of LinkedIn sponsored updates for your business. LinkedIn have recently added two very interesting options.

Direct Sponsored Content

LinkedIn have recently introduced direct sponsored content. Are you familiar with dark posts? If so, then you can equate direct sponsored content as LinkedIn’s new equivalent to dark posts. Direct content will not appear on your company or showcase page and will not be sent to the follower feeds.
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A major advantage is the ability to do A/B testing. Now different aspects of the content can be tested. This removes content versions appearing as duplications in the company page, showcase pages and follower feeds.

Clicking “Save” will host the direct sponsored content on a live LinkedIn URL but will not publish to the Company Page or page follower feeds.

Audience Expansion

LinkedIn have also added another new feature called Audience Expansion. Audience Expansion increases the reach of sponsored updates by including a wider set of LinkedIn’s professional members based on similar attributes to the original target audience criteria. It can be enabled by clicking the “more targeting options” link in the “Change Target Audience” box and then ticking the box next to “Audience Expansion”.

Imagine the possibilities with Audience Expansion. If you have created targeting based on a set of skills, Audience Expansion will expand the reach to include similar professionals with similar skills. Performance metrics such as impressions and clicks will include activity from both the target audience and any potential expansions. Note that the audience count will NOT include the expanded audience figures. In the above example the targeted audience number was 319,225. This excludes the extra people likely to view the update due to the audience expansion function being enabled.

Lead Accelerator

LinkedIn have also introduced the lead accelerator tool within the past few months. The LinkedIn lead accelerator tool is the most exciting B2B targeting introduction in 2015, in my opinion ;-).

LinkedIn lead accelerator could boost inbound marketing results
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The early case studies have shown that if B2B companies have the budget bandwidth, technical infrastructure and have approved the privacy issues, then they could have considerable success with a targeted approach using the LinkedIn lead accelerator.

A targeted approach using the LinkedIn lead accelerator

LinkedIn lead accelerator funnel breakdown

A recent LinkedIn case study* included these results:

“Landing page conversion rates were 2x higher than normal marketing campaigns”
“Cost per lead was 3x lower than traditional re-targeting”

Find out more about the LinkedIn lead accelerator tool here. I have not seen many possible alternatives to the LinkedIn lead accelerator tool. The “Personalization Solutions” from Demandbase comes close but does not have the deep integration with the huge LinkedIn database of members like the lead accelerator tool obviously does.

B2B Targeting To Acquire Qualified Leads

Acquiring qualified B2B leads based on targeted audiences still requires that the most relevant content is used in order to be successful. This is where content marketing techniques are essential, and I will be exploring this topic more in the future. The strategy is followed by the tactical plan and then the next stage after the content has been well thought through and prepared is the activation. Success follows the activation (hopefully), then the evaluation stage must not be forgotten at the end.

Targeting rather than broadcasting must be a technique that B2B marketers use more in 2015
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Targeting rather than broadcasting must be a technique that B2B marketers use more in 2015. LinkedIn will most likely be one of those platforms in the tactical plan for most B2B campaigns and activities. I have noticed that LinkedIn have abandoned many of the tools and gadgets that I showcased here just over a year ago. LinkedIn have instead invested in a solid portfolio of targeting tools that are irresistible for the B2B digital marketer.